Author: Montana StayerRelease Date: 6th February 2018
Genre: Science Fiction, Dark Fiction
Edition: E-book
Pages: 187
Publisher: –
Blurb:
The Scientist’s daughter was dying and he was desperate to save her by any means necessary. He illegally and artificially created the Subject, the perfect donor body, but was taken by surprise when the Subject turned out to be a fully conscious child. Faced with the choice of taking care of the child he accidentally created or saving his daughter, the Scientist chose the latter. He kept the Subject locked in the basement with full intent to kill her to save his daughter.
The Scientist’s plan ultimately failed and his daughter died, leaving him with the “thing” meant to save her.
It’s been years since his daughter died and the Scientist has kept the Subject locked up alone in the basement, refusing to acknowledge that she is a child and treating her strictly as an experiment. He keeps a rigid routine when visiting her and attempts to be completely objective, which proves to be difficult as the Subject has grown to be a very friendly child who insists on trying to build some sort of relationship with him.
Nothing’s changed in a long time. The Scientist begins losing sleep because of his worsening mental and emotional states and his exhaustion leads to mistakes, which cause problems with the Subject. When the Subject’s health starts rapidly deteriorating because of him, the Scientist’s forced to reconsider his objectivity but he is adamant about remaining indifferent, endangering the Subject’s life.
Review
★★★
The Subject And The Scientist by Montana Stayer is an unusual sci-fi tale about a man who does something he never intended to do and then ends up, quite unhappily, living with the consequences of his acts.
The plot described in the blurb of the book is simple enough, but the story is not; it is way more than one might expect after reading the summary. For one, the emotional aspect of the story was something I really found interesting, especially the detachment of The Scientist, the lead character, towards the girl, The Subject.
The writing style was simple and okay but the characterization was something I wasn’t overly impressed with. Overall, I feel that the story demanded two very, very strong characters to take the story to another level and that was something I found missing. The ending was different and made sense.
I’d recommend this book to light sci-fi fans and readers of the dark genre.
The Reading Bud 